New Volusia council splits on tourism board appointments

Published: Friday, January 25, 2013 at 6:10 p.m.

Last Modified: Friday, January 25, 2013 at 7:21 p.m.

The new Volusia County Council has found its first conflict: advertising authority nominations.

The council, after a 4-3 vote Thursday evening following a sometimes testy debate in DeLand, is divided on how to pick members for its three ad authorities, and on what a change means politically.

On the losing side of the vote: County Chair Jason Davis, Vice Chair Joyce Cusack and Councilman Josh Wagner, who didn't go quietly. The majority: Council members Pat Patterson, Deb Denys, Doug Daniels and Pat Northey.

"Yeah, there seemed to be a little bit of a dust-up on that one," Northey said the next day. "I expect, it's a new council, and we'll probably have a few more of those before we settle in."

The four-member majority favored a less weighted system of nominating people. The old way was based on districts: Each member whose elected district overlapped with an ad authority taxing district got to nominate a member for that board. Then the county chair and at-large council member, each elected countywide, got several extra nominations.

At the Halifax Area Ad Authority, for example, four district members got one nomination each, the at-large member got three, and the county chair got four.

That gave the most power to the two members who were elected by the entire county, rather than a section of it.

The new way would replace that system with a simple rotation — each member makes a nomination to each board, regardless of district, on a rolling turn-by-turn basis.

That struck Davis, Cusack and Wagner as unfair.

"To be quite honest with you, if the original ordinance was good enough for Frank Bruno, why is it not good enough for our new county chair, Jason Davis?" Davis said Friday.

"I think if it was fair enough for Frank, why isn't it fair enough for Jason?" echoed Cusack. "Fair is fair... I think there are political agendas going on here."

"You got a feeling that it appeared to be an attempt to change the authority of the chair and vice chair," agreed Wagner. "I can understand saying, well, every member should have an appointment. I was conceding that. But to say that a district representative gets the same amount as someone who was voted in by the entire county... I just don't think that makes much sense."

Daniels, who made the motion to vote on the issue, said the change "was not personal at all" and Davis "should not allow people to portray it to him that way." Before he voted for the new system, he advocated a simpler method — simply taking applications from people who want to join the boards, vote on them as a council, and appoint the top ones.

"Why the last council would've agreed to the chairman and the at-large member having multiple appointments like that . . . I just have no explanation for," Daniels argued. "It seems to me the last council abdicated some of its responsibility to the chair and the staff."

(Daniels said as much at Thursday's meeting, too, and offended Wagner when he called for a vote. It ended the discussion before Wagner was done arguing, and at the end of the meeting, Wagner followed him off the dais to express his displeasure.)

The 4-3 vote only passed a resolution directing county staff to write an ordinance laying out the new nomination rules. The council will still have to approve that ordinance at an upcoming meeting.

Volusia's ad authority boards decide how to spend bed-tax money that comes from guests in each district's hotels, motels and other short-term rentals. The largest board is the Halifax Area Ad Authority, which has 11 members. The smaller Southeast Volusia and West Volusia authorities each have seven board members.

Nominations for the board members have to be approved by a council vote, but they're rarely challenged and usually pass unanimously.

It can be hard to stay on a board, though, because of a strict attendance policy that includes ad authority workshops. In the old system, if a council member's nomination got kicked off for missing meetings, he or she got to nominate a new one. In the new system, that nomination will go to the next council member in the rotation.

Davis, if he loses some of his nomination power for those boards, still has authority to appoint fellow council members to other boards around the county — like the Volusia Transportation Planning Organization or the Early Learning Coalition. At Thursday's meeting, he asked the council to turn in a list of their preferences.

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